In 2025, Bpifrance* has dedicated 2.5 billion euros to the health sector, i.e. 40% more than a year previously. For True Medical, Olivier Chabanon, deputy director of the French Care plan at Bpifrance, details the priorities and challenges of this new strategy.
True Medical: Bpifrance has dedicated 2.5 billion euros to health in 2025. What does this assessment of French dynamics in terms of innovation reveal?
Olivier Chabanon: 2025 was indeed a year of intensification of our action in health. We have deployed 2.5 billion euros, compared to 1.8 billion in 2024, an increase of 40%. More than 3,200 healthcare players — startups, SMEs, ETIs, large groups, hospitals and even academic players — have been funded or supported.
France has many assets. We have excellent academic, scientific and medical research, talents, a very good hospital network, in particular thanks to the network of 33 university hospitals, and a strong entrepreneurial dynamic. The creation of companies in biotechnology, medtech and even digital health remains strong.
But we also have significant challenges to overcome. The health sector is particularly time consuming, expensive and risky. When a researcher creates a biotech, it often takes 10 to 15 years of R&D before reaching the market, with a failure rate of around 90%. And when a company reaches the market, it may need to raise more than a billion or even two billion euros. Financing is therefore truly the crux of the matter.
Added to this are growing regulatory requirements, market access that is still too slow and difficulties in accessing health data. Our challenge is therefore to enable these companies to complete these different stages and to create more French and European champions.
True Medical: Behind these investments, there is a very concrete purpose: to allow patients to access innovation more quickly. How to achieve this?
Olivier Chabanon: It is indeed one of our four main priorities. Our strategy is based on four axes: accelerating the emergence and growth of future French and European health champions, supporting a strong industrial policy to strengthen the health independence of France and Europe, accelerating patient access to innovation and preserving the solidity and sustainability of the health care system.
We are therefore working on reindustrialization. We want more production lines and factories in the health sector in France. It is important to maintain our R&D capabilities, but also to maintain production tools in the region.
“The objective of all our health actions is ultimately to serve the patient”
And behind all these actions, there is a purpose: to serve the patient. We want innovations to reach them more quickly, while contributing to the sustainability of our health system. This is particularly under pressure today, with the aging of the population and the increase in chronic diseases.
This is the whole challenge of our action: supporting companies over the long term, from innovation to industrialization and, when possible, to market access.
True Medical: Prevention has become a strong priority for Bpifrance. Why is this change in focal length so important?
Olivier Chabanon: We are convinced that prevention will be one of the major levers for the sustainability of our health system in the years to come. In 2025, we have notably financed more than 86 innovation projects in this area and launched a digital health prevention fund with 100 million euros.
Artificial intelligence also makes the promise of prevention much more credible. It makes it possible to act earlier on certain health risks and opens the way to more personalized, more continuous and potentially more effective prevention.
But prevention is not just about technology. It also involves changing practices and better supporting people. This is why we support companies that develop solutions in areas such as mental health, patient monitoring or even sports-health.
We are also working on prevention as an employer, since concrete actions are deployed among Bpifrance’s 4,500 employees. The idea is also to show that prevention can become a reality in organizations.
True Medical: AI today seems essential in health. How far can it transform care and research?
Olivier Chabanon: Artificial intelligence is probably the area where the transformation is strongest today. In the healthcare sector, almost two-thirds of companies now use generative AI and 44% have developed their own tools in-house. In digital health, 60% of the solutions deployed integrate AI building blocks.
Firstly, there is an issue of prevention. But AI can also increase the productivity of the healthcare system. It will allow professionals to devote more time to patients and less to administrative, documentary or repetitive tasks. It is already helping to modify care pathways and optimize the use of resources, particularly in hospitals.
“Artificial intelligence can accelerate research and innovation”
Finally, it can considerably accelerate research and innovation. In particular, we support companies that develop solutions to accelerate drug discovery. When we know that it generally takes 10 to 15 years to develop a drug candidate, being able to identify promising molecules more quickly represents a considerable time saving and can help reduce development risks and costs.
The real challenge now is the adoption of these technologies in healthcare practices and patient monitoring.
True Medical: You also defend French Care as a community capable of breaking down barriers between health actors. What role can it play in the face of these transformations?
Olivier Chabanon: The idea of French Care is precisely to break down silos. The community now brings together more than 1,400 members: startups, manufacturers, healthcare establishments, researchers, investors, caregivers, patients, etc., also including 30 regional ambassadors.
We believe that innovation often arises from the rapprochement between these different actors. An industrialist must be able to interact with an investor, a researcher with a caregiver, a startup with a healthcare establishment. This is also the role of an event like BIG: bringing together entrepreneurs, researchers, industrialists, investors and public stakeholders in the same place.
This community logic is essential because the entrepreneur can sometimes be alone in the face of the complexity of his journey. He must find financing, understand the regulatory issues, access data, meet the right partners and, then, seek out international markets.
French Care makes it possible to create a mass effect, to make this ecosystem more visible in France and internationally. And our ambition for the coming years is clear: Bpifrance plans to mobilize 10 billion euros by the end of 2030 to amplify this dynamic and accelerate the transformation of the healthcare system.
Ultimately, it’s not just about financing businesses. It is about creating an ecosystem capable of responding to the major health challenges of tomorrow.